Vera Bradley, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRA) Q1 2023 Results Conference Call June 8, 2022 9:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Mark Dely - Chief Administrative Officer

Rob Wallstrom - Chief Executive Officer

John Enwright - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Eric Beder - SCC Research

Joe Gomes - Noble Capital

Steve Marotta - CL King & Associates

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Vera Bradley First Quarter Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mark Dely, Vera Bradley's Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead.

Mark Dely

Good morning, and welcome, everyone. We'd like to thank you for joining us for today's call. Some of the statements made during our prepared remarks and in response to your questions may constitute forward-looking statements made pursuant to and within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended.

Such forward-looking statements are subject to both known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those that we expect. Please refer to today's press release in the company's most recent Form 10-K filed with the SEC for a discussion of known risks and uncertainties. Investors should not assume that the statements made during the call will remain operative at a later time.

We undertake no obligation to update any information discussed on today's call. I will now turn the call over to Vera Bradley's CEO, Rob Wallstrom. Rob?

Rob Wallstrom

Thank you, Mark. Good morning, and thank you for joining us on today's call. John Enwright, our CFO, also joins me today. While total company first quarter revenues of $98.5 million fell below our expectations and resulted in a net loss before certain charges of $0.19 per diluted share, we continued implementation of our price increases, which helped to offset logistics and sourcing pressures, continue to drive product innovation, controlled expenses and completed $10.5 million of share repurchases, while maintaining a strong debt-free balance sheet.

We are clearly seeing a bifurcation in the spending of our customer base. At Vera Bradley, Direct channel full-line revenues were above last year as customers with higher household incomes remained engaged and spent more than last year. We also saw a healthy year-over-year rebound in Indirect channel revenues. However, inflationary pressures, including rate -- including rising gas prices, particularly impacted the spending of Vera Bradley customers with household incomes below 55,000 as well as traffic and spending in our Vera Bradley Direct channel factory stores for the quarter.